Two-dimensional nonlinear optical activity spectroscopy of coupled multi-chromophore system

Abstract

Most biomolecules are chiral. A variety of optical activity measurement techniques have been extensively used to study chiral natures of complicated biological molecules such as proteins and nucleic acids. Recently, coherent two-dimensional (2D) spectroscopic techniques have been developed and widely used to study structures and dynamics of biomolecules via measuring couplings between chromophores. However, such 2D optical spectroscopic methods utilizing linearly polarized beams do not provide information on the molecular chirality. Thus, we have theoretically shown that novel 2D optical activity measurement techniques based on three- and four-wave-mixing schemes are of use to obtain the 2D spectrum of a chiral molecule. Particularly, we carried out numerical simulations of 2D optical activity spectra of polypeptides and a light-harvesting complex. These methods utilizing circularly polarized beams and related spectroscopic techniques will be of great use in understanding and elucidating the underlying mechanisms of ultrafast chemical and conformational changes of chiral biomolecules in the future.